Bangladesh: A Golden Age

 

A Golden Age

by Tahmima Anam
 

 

 

A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, was featured on NPR, a source I trust absolutely for book recommendations.  But the main reason I chose it for Bangladesh is because my friend Liz told me it was one of her all-time favorites.  I really do want suggestions and really will consider them seriously. A Golden Age was right up my alley, so Liz either knows me well or it was a happy coincidence.  I've already mentioned my fondness for first novels, and this is an example of another homerun for a debut piece of fiction.  I also happen to have a special fondness for books set in South Asia.  I don't know why.  I've traveled a lot but not much in that part of the world other than a quick work trip to New Delhi, India where I didn't see much outside of the hotel and a few government offices where my meetings took place.  Something about those countries' cultures seem rich, vibrant, and enduring, and the setting is ripe for exploring themes that I get absorbed in when reading.  This book fit that description precisely and sparked my imagination through its story of a family that is shocked out of its every day normalcy and thrust into a time of war.

 

Rehana is a young woman when she is widowed by her husband's sudden death, too soon after their arranged marriage that generated deep love and two cherished children, Sohail and Maya.  The novel opens with Rehana's loss of custody because she is too poor to provide for them and moves quickly to her determined reversal of fortune when she improves her circumstances and recovers her babies in only a year's time.  From that point on, Rehana devotes herself to them, never contemplating herself or her future as she steers them towards adulthood and independence.  Just as they are on the brink of coming into their own, the country breaks into a civil war that no one saw coming. 

 

The war that provides the backdrop for the novel took place in 1971, when relations between East and West Pakistan, separated by the enormous country of India, became increasingly hostile.  Sohail and Maya, now young adults, are active on their college campus in protesting West Pakistan's refusal to recognize East Pakistan's elected leaders.  Tensions build quickly, and when the Pakistani army begins killing protesters, Sohail and Maya are pulled into a nationalistic fight for East Pakistan's independence.  Rehana is not especially political but has remained as devoted to her children as she vowed to be when they returned home so many years ago.  She, too, becomes pulled in, first by agreeing to house the resistance fighters, and then, just as the nation of Bangladesh is born, by falling in love with one of them.  As a reader, I also felt pulled ... into the history of Bangladesh, the fierce devotion of Rehana's motherhood, Sohail's determination, Maya's frantic search for her role, and ultimately, the awful choice Rehana is forced to make in the end.

 

There are parts of this novel where you'll find yourself drifting along with Anam's dreamy narrative and others where you'll be holding your breath with anticipation of what happens next.  This is one I'd strongly recommend to anyone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bahrain: The Meeting Point

 

The Meeting Point

by Lucy Caldwell

 

 

 So, I actually read this book way back in May, just as things were getting crazy with the end of school year stuff.  I waited too long to write about it, then got distracted by several other books I read during the summer so I kept stalling.  I don't know if anything I write now, six entire months later, will accurately depict my experience of reading The Meeting Point.  But I'll give it a shot.  The six month break was good for my motivation to get back to my alphabetical, literary journey around the world.  I'd been feeling discouraged by a few duds and the lack of choices for many of the smaller countries, but I've recommitted and will continue to work my way through the B's.  I really am glad I didn't impose a timeframe on myself for this endeavor though.  I think I'm more the meandering type.

 

The Meeting Point is about a young woman, Ruth and her husband, Euan, who move to Bahrain with their young daughter so that Euan can serve as a Christian missionary.  Ruth believes their purpose is to provide pastoral care to a church that is attended by expatriates from Western Europe, primarily the United States and their own homeland, the United Kingdom.  But upon their arrival in Bahrain, she learns there is another, very dangerous mission that Euan intends to undertake, one that risks their physical safety and compromises what they have built together as a young family.  When her protests fall on deaf ears and Euan begins spending increasingly long stretches of time away from home, Ruth befriends a British, adolescent girl, Noor, who is living with her Arab father and recovering from a tragic incident at the boarding school she previously attended.  Through their friendship and through helping care for Ruth's child, Noor begins to heal from the past and from her loneliness.  She relies on Ruth to mentor her through the process of learning to trust again, but meanwhile, Ruth is distracted by Farid, a much younger man who acts as her tour guide and shows her the beauty of her temporary home in Bahrain.  As the relationships between Ruth and each of the other characters ... Euan, Noor, and Farid ... spin out of control, Ruth learns some painful lessons.  With Bahrain as a haunting backdrop, Ruth questions her faith in God, in her marriage, and in herself. 

 

The book's foundation in Christianity is important to the character development, the setting, and the context of the underlying themes and plot.  You do not need to be Christian to read and enjoy the novel, nor are you likely to find it to be preachy or theological.  In this sense, Caldwell did an outstanding job of exploring religion, history, and politics while focusing purely on how the collision of those three things impacts the humans at the vertex of those ideologies.  Goodreads rating shows just over three stars overall, but I gave it four.